Capital expenditures (CAPEX or capex) are expenditures altering the future of the business.
An operating expense, operating expenditure, operational expense, operational expenditure or OPEX is an ongoing cost for running a product, business, or system.

Its counterpart, a capital expenditure (CAPEX), is the cost of developing or providing non-consumable parts for the product or system.

For example, the purchase of a tablet punching machine involves CAPEX, and raw material (active ingredient and excipients), power and maintenance costs represents OPEX.

In business, an operating expense is a day-to-day expense such as sales and administration, or research & development, as opposed to production, costs, and pricing. In short, this is the money the business spends in order to turn inventory into throughput.